Permit me to adduce the testimony of a single authority—­the admission of a strict conservative, a strict royalist, Professor Huber—­a man who has likewise devoted his studies to the social question and the development of the workingmen’s movement.

I like to call on the testimony of this man (in the course of this letter I shall do it now and then again) because he is politically entirely opposed to me, and in regard to economic questions differs radically from me, and must accordingly be the best person to remove, through his testimony, the suspicion that the slight advantage which I attach to those institutions is only the consequence of previously formed political tendencies; furthermore because Professor Huber, who stands as far from liberalism as from my political views, has for this very reason the necessary impartiality to make in the field of political economy admissions which are in accordance with the truth; whereas all adherents of the liberal school of political economy are forced to deceive the workingmen, or, in order to deceive them better, first to deceive themselves, in order to bring the facts into harmony with their tendencies.

“Without underestimating,” says Professor Huber, “the relative usefulness of savings banks, accident and sickness insurance, etc., as far as it really goes, these good things may nevertheless carry great negative disadvantages with them, in that they stand in the way of improvement.”

And surely never would these negative disadvantages persist and stand in the way of improvement more than if they took up the attention of the great German workingmen’s movement, or divided its forces.

It was stated in various newspapers, and your letter itself states, that you have been recommended from almost all sides to take into consideration the Schulze-Delitzsch organizations—­credit associations, raw material associations, and consumers’ associations—­for the improvement of the situation of the working class.  Allow me to ask you for still closer attention.

Schulze-Delitzsch may be considered from three points of view:  First, from the political point of view, he belongs to the Progressive party, which has already been discussed.  Second, he claims to be a political economist.  In this respect—­as a theoretical economist—­he stands entirely on the ground of the Liberal school:  he shares all its mistakes, fallacies, and self-deceptions.  The addresses which he has made so far to the Berlin workingmen are a striking proof of this—­misrepresentations of fact and conclusions which in no way follow from his premises.  However, it will not help your purpose, and it is not my intention, to go into a criticism here of the economic views and the speeches of Schulze-Delitzsch and to point out these self-deceptions and fallacies which, in matters of theoretical economics, he has in common with the whole Liberal school to which he belongs.  I shall be compelled later, in any case, to come back to the essential content of these doctrines.